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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

LOLZ, whut?

Bobby lived his rainy day off to the fullest. He was covered in mud and shavings when I pulled him out of the stall and had clearly had a nibble on one of his bell boots, but all shoes were still attached. Phew.

Even though all Bobby has to do to get put on crossties is step out of his stall and turn in a circle, it usually takes us several minutes to get positioned. There are so many exciting things in that little circle, especially when he's in one of his Touch All the Things mood.

his entire head and neck were in benny's stall. this was after iyelled at him to leave benny alone.

"the fuck do you want, bro? i'm trying to eat here."

I left him off the crossties since the barn was empty and he amused himself by seeing how far he could fit other horse's lead ropes down his throat before I caught him.

"time out. did i hear the cookies?"

He was feeling fresh when I got on. His walk was so forward and sproingy and hip-shaking that I felt like I should have been dancing a salsa. Naturally that transferred to being kind of a tool starting out and my requests to slow it down a bit were met with a, "lolz, whut?"

He finally settled down at the trot and we went to work. I really want to transfer his dressage work in the indoor to the outdoor this summer. He's so focused and obedient inside, and while he's not bad on the flat in the outdoor, the quality just doesn't carry over. I think part of that is that there are mirrors in the indoor and I'm much quicker to catch a problem with either myself or him, but the other part is that there are so many distractions outside that his brain goes on overload when there isn't a jump in front of his face.

After a nice warm up, we ran through Novice A in preparation for this weekend (and the weekend after--I sold my old vest and sent in the entry this morning!). He was "enthusiastic", but he kept his shit together and didn't set a foot wrong.

He had a walk break and then we tried our trot lengthenings again. He broke into the canter the first couple of times I asked which wasn't surprising with how forward the whole ride was going, but we both kept our cool and he really put in a great effort. For a Thoroughbred, he can be pretty extravagant in his movement, but he's certainly no warmblood. Regardless, the camera will be taking a field trip tomorrow and hopefully I can capture how he's progressing.

We finished with a hack up the hill next to the pastures where we passed BO on her way down the road. She told me there was a trail through the Christmas trees if I could find it, so we set out.

kind of looks like a trail.

However, our "trail" quickly dead ended into trees we couldn't get into. We ended up wandering around a bit until we found a deer path that looped us back to the pastures. Finished off by pouring Kopertox into his RH which was looking a little thrush-y. And by "pouring into his RH" I obviously mean "pouring all over my hand". One day I will invest in latex gloves.